When Doctor Strange came out in 2016, the character The Ancient One, a male Tibetan monk in the comics, was played by American actress Tilda Swinton. There was whitewashing controversy, but the choice had been strategic by Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige. A small backlash in the States was worth it to appease China.
China does not recognize Tibet as its own country, and a monk from there, with no recognition as being Chinese, would offend the Chinese government. By 2016, movie studios knew all the things to do to ensure a shot at the Chinese box office: avoid references to Taiwan and Tibet, don’t make the government or police force look corrupt, and avoid particular minorities such as Black or queer people.
Now, six years later, the Doctor Strange sequel contains a queer-coded main character with two explicitly lesbian moms. She even wears a Pride pin!
China was one of a few countries that refused to play Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, specifically citing Disney’s refusal to remove the gay references. The same happened with Eternals, which featured the first-ever gay superhero on screen. So what happened between Doctor Strange and its sequel? How did we go from working so hard to appease China to refusing to even recut the film?
An Embarrassingly Brief Summary of Hollywood’s History with the Chinese Government
China was impressed with the U.S. propaganda films of the 1940s and 1950s. Movies like The Invaders and Flying Tigers entertained audiences and fueled patriotism. American propaganda wasn’t just about the pro-war sentiment that may initially come to mind. Cinema helped audiences feel comfortable with women entering the workforce (granted, so the men could go to war) and seeing Black people out in public.
China’s government tried to manufacture similar sway over its own people through film, but failed. China was more focused on the propaganda than the entertainment. The films were coming straight from government departments, rather than skilled filmmakers. Perhaps most importantly, however, theaters simply weren’t a part of the fabric of Chinese culture like in the U.S.
Decades later, China decided to start letting in select foreign films, predominantly those from the United States. There were two main objectives to this. First, putting in successful entertainment from other countries may help revitalize the run-down theaters and encourage expansion like what was seen in the U.S. Second, China could control which movies were allowed to play, limiting which American ideals were put in front of Chinese audiences. As things stood, there was a black market for hardcopies of American movies, which meant China had no control when people purchased movies with themes like rising up against the government or police.
The country only allowed 10 U.S. films per year, and Hollywood had no problems with their strict rules about what could be shown because the money from China was just icing on the cake. Hollywood was not reliant on the Chinese box office — they’d never had it before and been just fine — so China could reject whatever movies it wanted and the ones it played would earn the film a few extra million dollars. No harm, no foul. The most popular films in China at this time were action romps where viewers could be thrilled even if the translations weren’t the best. Some of the highest-grossing flicks in the country were The Fugitive and True Lies.
The U.S. presence in Chinese theaters continued to grow through the 90s, and then Titanic came along and showed the power of the Chinese box office. It wasn’t just icing on the cake; it could be a fortune.
More and more studios began vying to be one of the 10 American movies (eventually increased to 15, and then increased a few more times until shortly before Covid-19) that China would show. But China had some demands, and those demands grew the more Americans became thirsty for that sweet, sweet Chinese box office.
China’s demands started with the kind of obvious compromises Hollywood was used to making for international movies. Stuff like “a Chinese person can’t be the villain of the movie” was expected from a government like China’s, and Hollywood was eager to accommodate. That would turn into a demand for a heroic Chinese presence in the film. This often put more of a strain on the storytellers to create or change characters to accommodate a Chinese lead, but ultimately, who would complain about more diversity on screen? A net good, right?
Then demands escalated to include scenes shot in China, and those shots needed to make China look beautiful and the law enforcement look competent, and you know what, while we’re at it, why don’t you just have the Chinese military save the day? Go back to the early Transformers movies and note that the Chinese military arrives after the climactic battle before the U.S. military. This wasn’t in the original script of the July 4-released movie. This was an edit to appease the Chinese government.
Beyond the demands for only-good representation, there is also an erasure of other kinds of concepts and people groups. Themes about standing up to authority, or storylines about corruption in law enforcement, are rejected from Chinese screens (unless it is clearly conveyed that those are uniquely American problems). The same is done to whole people groups, too. The Chinese government doesn’t want to see the stories of Black people. There’s a reason John Boyega’s Finn character is smaller than the droid BB-8 on the Chinese Star Wars: The Force Awakens poster.
And, most importantly for our purposes here, the Chinese government doesn’t want to see the stories of queer people.
Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Box Office Draws
Iron Man did gangbusters in China and set a precedent for movies with budgets so high that they were dependent on the Chinese box office. The “icing on the cake” approach of The Fugitive wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
The next massive movie in China wasn’t a superhero movie, but it was a big-budget, sci-fi fantasy in the same vein. Chinese audiences loved him from Titanic, and were eager to turn out for James Cameron’s Avatar. If Iron Man set the precedent that studios could rely on China to make up for a bloated budget, Avatar’s draw was so massive that it showed it wasn’t worth risking China’s business, even if you didn’t need it for the budget.
Something interesting happened when Hollywood started to remake the 1984 movie, Red Dawn. In the 2012 remake, the attacking country was changed from the Soviet Union to China to accommodate modern perceived threats. When China got wind of this, newspapers in the country started attacking MGM for an assault on Chinese ideals. MGM panicked that making China the bad guy in a single film would risk their ability to release big-ticket movies like James Bond in China. So suddenly, even though the film was completed, the studio spent a fortune on VFX updates to completely cover up the Chinese imagery from the attacking country. The flags, uniforms, and everything were digitally redesigned to be North Korea instead.
Finally, the film looked good enough to play in China, and it went on to bomb anyway.
Note that the Chinese government never said a word about Red Dawn. Some of their newspapers did, but that was just for their own people. The Chinese government never had to lift a finger for a Hollywood studio to spend a fortune bending over backward to appeal to China.
This trend was still going on at the time of the release of the original Doctor Strange. This trend of accommodating the anticipated qualms from China to ensure box office is exactly why The Ancient One was turned into a white lady. China didn’t ask for these changes — Disney just assumed it would.
How China Views, or Doesn’t View, Gay People
Homosexuality is not illegal in China, but authorities don’t want to do anything to encourage homosexuality. There are no protections from discrimination, in the workplace or beyond. Gay marriage is not recognized and gay couples certainly can’t adopt.
Roughly 80% of Chinese people believe homosexual acts are not justifiable, and the government wants to keep it that way. That includes banning films, or at least removing scenes, that make homosexual people empathetic.
In Bohemian Rhapsody, China removed the scene where Freddie Mercury is with a male lover. During the scene where Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis is explained, the sound literally just drops out of the film entirely. For Green Book, Chinese censors simply cropped a sexually charged scene to remove all but the characters' faces, so that the sexuality of Maharshala Ali’s character Don Shirley is never made explicit.
According to some of China’s gay population, this kind of representation matches their lived experiences. As long as they stay in their lane, they are allowed to live their lives. If they make their sexuality known to the hetero world of China, they are judged or attacked. Most gay people in China have active social lives where they can be themselves, but can never come out to their own families.
The Student Becomes the Master
The Chinese government never liked American films dominating the box office. They began opening highly anticipated American films against each other to help cannibalize the market. Theater attendants were even trained to ring patrons up for the wrong movie so that the China-produced option would get more revenue. Approximately 9% of sales in China are likely attributed to the wrong film.
But for a long time, China knew it needed Hollywood expertise. Even if the country went out of its way to sabotage big-budget Hollywood flicks, there was a loving reception for those movies that its own propaganda films still weren’t capable of.
After decades of strained cooperation, however, that began to shift. Hollywood had only put up with Chinese demands because it was profitable. China had dealt with the U.S. in order to learn from them.
This started with China sending students and government officials to Hollywood sets to learn how about set production and choreography. Chinese representatives were put in writer’s rooms to learn about crafting story. Then there were some U.S./China co-productions, including the successful Kung Fu Panda 3, and the unsuccessful Matt Damon flick, The Wall.
After the short-lived co-production experiment, the tides turned. With China proving it’s own box office merits, they started hiring American talent to come to Chinese sets to advise.
China copied the formula of American classics like Top Gun, The Patriot, and Rocky IV to strike the balance of bombastic action and rugged individualism, so long as it was in the name of nationalistic exceptionalism.
The film that cemented China as a box office powerhouse with its own movies was called Wolf Warrior 2. Mind you, the original Wolf Warrior was not a phenomenon, but the sequel tapped into the beats of a hero’s journey like what Americans became familiar with in the 1980s. It also had help from Hollywood. Rather than sending students and government officials to Hollywood sets, as had become custom, Wolf Warrior 2 was one of the many films in this era where American talents were brought to the U.S. to directly shape China-produced and China-distributed propaganda films.
In the case of Wolf Warrior 2, the names are quite pertinent to the journey of a gay superhero. Joe and Anthony Russo, directors of the Captain America and Avengers films, were co-producers on Wolf Warrior 2. They also brought their stunt coordinator from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sam Hargrave, and American composer Joseph Trapanese. The Russos asked not to be listed as producers on the film, but their involvement is well documented. The Wolf Warrior character was a supersoldier, something the Russos had experience with.
Wolf Warrior 2 went on to become the highest-grossing movie in Chinese history. It grossed more than Wonder Woman and Thor Ragnarok, which came out the same year, despite only pulling from Chinese audiences, as opposed to the global markets of the other two superhero flicks.
As soon as China started making money, she changed. China suddenly declined to screen more and more American films, and was less willing to give reasons. It cranked out production of its own movies with stars that looked like its audiences. Chinese audiences were thrilled to see gripping blockbusters with emotional nuance where Chinese people played the leads.
With Wolf Warrior 2, China’s government had finally cracked the filmmaking formula. The student had become the master.
Another Best Director Winner Becomes a Thorn in China’s Side, Which Leads to the First Gay Superhero on Screen
Acclaimed director Ang Lee has always had a complicated relationship with China. Born in Taiwan, China tried to claim the filmmaker as one of their own. Then he made a movie called The Wedding Banquet with overt gay themes, and China decided they didn’t want him anymore.
Then he made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which became a massive success. China liked him again, viewing him as a useful tool in Chinese representation. But then the movie bombed in China where Kung Fu movies were old hat. Crouching Tiger won Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. China was desperate for its own Oscar, but the Academy recognizes Taiwan as its own entity, so China didn’t receive the trophy. Perhaps Lee would not be as useful to China as it had hoped.
Then Lee made another gay movie you may have heard of called Brokeback Mountain. China was eager to show “one of their own” win Best Director for the hit movie, but they edited his speech to not reference any of the gay shit. Chinese viewers watching his acceptance speech would have no idea the movie was about two men in love.
It’s been a fun back and forth for several decades, but in the last couple years, there was a new Best Director winner in town with whom China would have a complicated relationship.
Chloe Zhao, born in Bejing, China, was a rising star in the U.S. and a shining star of possibility in China. Critics in the States praised Zhao for her distinctive sense of place, sweeping cinematography of American vistas, and poignant criticism of the failings of American capitalism. That last part, in particular, made her a hit with Chinese officials.
China was fully on board with the Oscar Campaign for Zhao’s Nomadland, hoping to recreate their shining star moment with Ang Lee, but without all that Taiwan baggage. During the campaign, however, an old interview surfaced in which she referred to China as a place “where there are lies everywhere.”
The resurfaced comments infuriated China and Zhao’s name was wiped from the public discourse. Her speech was not played in China and the country refused to play her movies going forward.
Interestingly, Zhao had already made her next film. It was Marvel’s The Eternals and it just so happened to feature a gay superhero. Surely the film would have been re-cut for Chinese audiences if Disney had been given the chance. But with China already declining to show the movie because of Zhao’s involvement, the studio was given the opportunity to look good in the homeland by saying they refused to make a separate cut where the superhero’s sexuality was less overt.
So Where Are We Now?
Xi Jinping became president of the People’s Republic of China in 2013. Since then, things have only gotten worse in regard to the country’s dictatorial tendencies. He has worked hard to erode norms like the fact that international councils have a right to police other countries’ human rights violations. Filmmakers who have spoken out against Xi have simply gone missing.
China has created a massively successful machine with its own movies at its own box office. Hollywood, meanwhile, has struggled both in the U.S. and abroad since the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only has Chinese money largely taken off the table, but Americans have gotten used to streaming things at home, and only show up to theaters for our own propaganda films like Top Gun: Maverick. (And Spider-Man.Does that count as propaganda? His costume is red and blue and the fight was on the Statue of Liberty.)
With Hollywood backed into a corner, and China eating the lunch of the other most powerful countries, the cinema has become a battleground for ideals. Both countries are trying to prove dominance, not only for the wallets of viewers, but for their minds.
An Imperfect Historical Parallel
Before World War II, Nazis had a disproportionate hold over Hollywood. Like China, Germany’s dictatorship worked to ensure that the German government, its locales, its law enforcement, and its people were only represented in the highest possible regard.
This prevented American filmmakers from creating real commentary about the budding atrocities in the country — studios couldn’t risk losing that valuable box office. It didn’t matter how esteemed you were. Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, subject of David Fincher’s Mank, had his anti-Hitler script killed before it could go into production.
Unlike China (at least for now), Germany wasn’t just concerned about brainwashing its own citizens with cinema. It was determined to look good to the whole world. Nazis would send spies to different countries to ensure that the cut of the film was the same as the one Germany got. If spies found anti-Nazi sentiment in any film anywhere, their government would bully the responsible studio.
This continued until Germans, feeling the impact of war on their homeland, stopped going to the movies. Quite suddenly, Hollywood was free from the pressures of Nazi Germany because the country wasn’t making them any money anyway. Hollywood started cranking out anti-German sentiment which swiftly moved public opinion enough for America to enter the war.
The same films that originally impressed China were only possible when another dictatorship lost its grasp. Now the same thing is happening again, only this time, China is the one subject to rapidly changing sentiment.
So what happened between Doctor Strange and Doctor Strange 2? How were gays suddenly allowed in movies? Because China stopped being profitable.
Does Disney or any other major studio deserve credit for its newfound representation? No, at least not in regard to China. These changes are decades too late. Does that take away from their significance, though? Also no. In this case, the trite “better late than never” rings true.
It is a very American idea that anyone can grow up to change the world. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay, have gay parents, or you’re an actual superhero. These movies, despite the behind-the-scenes bullshit, teach kids that.
The Red Carpet
Before I conclude, I want to note that the foundational text for this article is from gay author Eric Schwartzel’s Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Battle for Global Supremacy. If you are looking for a history of Hollywood and China’s relationship that is not embarrassingly condensed, he’s your guy. I highly recommend the book. I focused the article, obviously, on all things gay and/or superhero, but there are so many more complexities in the story. Learn why you don’t see Richard Gere around anymore, why most theaters now have reclining seats, and why one of the leads of 2022’s The 355 was entirely green-screened into the film. It all comes back to China.